Mobile Mozart Art Gallery

July 10, 2008

Road schooling has some unique challenges, but for the most part we all
really enjoy it. Mozart is forever self- initiating and making art
projects, so one of the challenges is what do you do with all these
prolific kiddie "masterpieces"? This is a big enough challenge in a
home, but becomes much more limited on the road with our total lack of
significant storage space. Our main way of keeping them is through
taking pictures of them because our space is so limited.

We do keep a few of the best ones and send them home with Mozart's ever
growing souvenir pile ( even though we keep those to a minimum too and
think small or light weight in all things). We have a folder for her
art, so she can put them in there when she is done with them.

Of course, a child likes to have them on display, so we do that as
well. It is a tiny space, but represented well with art! We only have a
few little cabinets but they are just the right size to add some art on
top and Mozart beams with pride to have them up and they make us smile
too as they cheer up our RV dated decor.

Like most kids, she likes to sign all of our creations, so I have taken
the liberty to use our Photoshop retouch tool to remove her name for
privacy reasons, thus that is what the smudge part is. She is an
artist who will work on any surface & always amazes me on how
quickly she works. Sometimes she works outside on her table, but she
will also do art work in bed, at our inside table or on a bus, ground,
museum or park bench.

She likes to incorporate nature into her art often, so we tease her and
call her Andy Goldworthy who is famous for his work in nature. I love the
pretty things she does in nature just by collecting things from the
campsite or using mud, leaves and flowers. All of these are recent pictures.

The last picture below is one of her
mixed pieces. She found an interesting piece of bark as we were walking
and that sparked the idea. She tucked it away in the extra zip pocket
in her violin case & she set to it as soon as we got "home" to our
campsite. She used the bark, leaves, grass and twigs ( not sure if that
is clear in the picture) and added some other pieces from her art box.

She has always had a very good since of humor and even as a baby
enjoyed playful games and teasing. This shows up in her art too. She
did the water color piece of the laundry that I had up to dry (as I
often hand-wash a few things when I shower in the morning and then hang
them up to dry). I asked her what the last part was on the right hand
side and she looked at her dad with a sly grin on her face. They love
to tease each other. She explained with a big chuckle, that they were
daddy's stinky socks and the extra mark was the smell wafting in the
air! The stories she comes up with about her art can be very
entertaining.

We usually have a large art pad and color pencils with us when we tour
and sometimes she sees something that she wants to quickly sketch. I
have included a picture she did of a large fountain in Lisbon and the
famous Belem Tower. The tower one is really poor picture of Mozart and her
eyes are closed, but it seems to be the only one we have of the tower
which I thought was quite good for a quick scribble on the ground under
a shady tree. We got some video of her drawing it and may get that up
one of these days. Between all the art museums and time to do art
projects, traveling has been wonderful for her art education!

I love her Picasso-like drawing that I used as the lead picture for
this post. She did it in just a few moments time when we arrived at the
campsite in Lisbon while her dad went into reception to register. Our
RV was parked right across from a statue that she liked and wanted to
draw, so she pulled out the stuff and went right to it. I've enclosed
the picture I took of the statue after she did it as I was surprised
she had such a good likeness in such a short time. Kids are so fearless
and open, they make everything look so easy and fun!

Comments

Hello :)
My family and I have been enjoying your journey for months now but I think that this is the first time i've posted a comment - but i had to because this was such a great blog entry. I really loved seeing Mozart's artistic endeavours & i loved hearing about her process. My boys are still younger than Mozart but I am inspired by you to start doing more art in nature and to start studying -in a playful way of course :) - the great artists. Thanks for taking us along on your grand adventures!

Kerry-Thanks a lot! I can not even imagine how one handles all the art with more than one child, but I am sure you have thought of clever ways! ;)

Hello Amber! So nice to "meet" you & I am very happy to hear that you liked this post. I was actually a little hesitant to post it as I was not sure if any one would be interested. It is great for us to have a reference point & of course the Grandparents like to see these things. ;)

We are in nature so much ( more than one is in a house) that combining it with art seems quite natural.

I have some great books about teaching art to kids that I will list soon if I do not have them up yet.

Thanks for coming along on our adventures with us!! I always love hearing that it is helpful to families!!